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Human nature

The early 1870s were a turning point in the global debate about human evolution, with deep implications for science, colonial expansion, industrial progress, religious belief, and ethical and philosophical debate. Darwin’s correspondence from this period is of fundamental importance for understanding both the development of his theory of human origins and its relationship to prevailing assumptions about human nature.

I believe there exists… an instinct for truth … & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.

Darwin to J. S. Henslow, [1 April 1848]

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I demur to your saying … that animals are governed only by selfish motives. Look at the maternal instincts & still more at the social instincts. How unselfish is a Dog!

Darwin to Neil Arnott, 16 February [1860]

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I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is; but everyone has his own pet horror…

Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 9 February [1865]

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My object is to make out … the causes of the movement of certain muscles under various emotions in man and the lower animals.

Darwin to James Crichton-Browne, James, 22 May 1869

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…you feel astonished at my bringing man & brutes so near together in their whole nature (though with a wide hiatus)…

Darwin to St G. J. Mivart, 21 April [1871]

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…the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value…

When Darwin resumed systematic research on emotions around 1866, he began to collect observations more widely and composed a list of queries on human expression. A number of handwritten copies were sent out in 1867 (see, for example, letter to Fritz Muller, 22 February [1867]). The list was printed for ease of distribution sometime in late 1867 or early 1868. Darwin went over his questions, refining them, as we can see from this copy of the printed list with small corrections in Darwin’s hand.

'I hear that Ladies think it delightful reading, but that it does not do to talk about it, which no doubt promotes the sale.' For the first time online you can now read the full texts of nearly 800 letters Darwin wrote and received during 1871, the year in which his controversial first public statement on human evolution was published. The extraordinary number of letters reflects the excitement the book – Descent of man and selection in relation to sex – caused. All 2500 copies of the first printing sold immediately, and 5000 more copies were published during the year.

Hensleigh Wedgwood, Emma Darwin’s brother and Charles’s cousin, was a philologist, barrister and original member of the Philological Society, which had been created in 1842. In 1857, while Wedgwood was preparing a dictionary of English etymology, he wrote to Darwin suggesting that the common origin of the French “chef” and the English “head” and “bishop” illustrated the parallels between extinct and transitional forms in language and palaeontology.

Darwin’s work on emotional expression, from notes in his Beagle diary and observations of his own children, to questionnaires, and experiments with photographs, was an integral part of his broad research on human evolution. It provided one of the main bodies of evidence for the descent of humans from animals.

Thanks to all who took part in our online emotions experiment – over 18,000 of you! The formal stage of the experiment is now over, but it will be staying online as an activity, so if you don’t want to know the results, look away now. If you’d like to find out more about the experiment, or have a go yourself, click here. We promised to give some feedback and so here is what we made of the results. We’ve summarised the top 20 responses to each photograph in the pie charts below.

Try the emotion experiment for yourself. Between March and November 1868, while Darwin was researching his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, he showed a succession of visitors a set of photographs of human faces, some with the muscles artificially contracted by electric probes, and asked them what emotion they thought the photographs conveyed. Darwin’s research has striking parallels with contemporary facial recognition experiments. We have recreated Darwin’s expression experiment online, using 21st century techniques to study many of the same problems that Darwin was interested in, using the same photographs Darwin used more than 100 years ago.

Darwin's first reflections on human progress were prompted by his experiences in the slave-owning colony of Brazil, and by his encounters with the Yhagan peoples of Tierra del Fuego. Harsh conditions, privation, poor climate, bondage and servitude, could impede human progress or cause degeneration. In the "Fuegians", Darwin thought he had witnessed man in his most "primitive wildness" (letter to Henslow, 11 April 1833). They represented both the yawning gap between wild and domesticated humans, and the unsettling proximity of the savage and the civilized.

In Descent of Man, Darwin argued that human morality had evolved from the social instincts of animals, especially the bonds of sympathy and love. Darwin gathered observations over many decades on animal behavior: the heroic sacrifices of social insects, the tender bonds of affection between female apes and their offspring, the courage and loyalty of dogs for their masters. Cooperation and regard for others were beneficial to animal communities as a whole, and helped them to survive in the battle for life.

Darwin made a famous comment about parallels between changes in language and species change. Gregory Radick, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Leeds University, talks about the importance of the development of language to Darwin, what Darwin's letters tell us about his thinking, and assesses Darwin's impact on later study.

We chose four films to cover a broad chronology from the early 19th to the early 20th century; and a range of themes, including teaching Darwinism, slavery and race, degeneration in Victorian society, the boundaries between normal and abnormal in the nineteenth-century sideshow, and the tension between science and art. We wanted a good mix between films that were difficult to see on the big screen and old favourites that deserved another airing.

The programme ran from 22 to 31 October 2012 at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, as part of Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Thanks JSH for his address [Address delivered in the Ipswich Museum on 9th March 1848]. Questions a sentence which implies that only the practical use of a scientific discovery makes it worth while. The instinct for truth justifies science without any practical results. Cites his work on cirripedes.

The idea of the man paper is striking and new. Minor points of difference. Conjectures regarding racial differences; the possible correlation between complexion and constitution. HisQuery to Army surgeonsto determine this point. Offers ARW his notes on man, which CD doubts he will be able to use.

On sexual selection in "our aristocracy"; primogeniture is a scheme for destroying natural selection.

Thanks for MS observations on expression. Discusses hair standing on end in terror and rage. Asks JC-B to observe contraction of platysma myoides. "Your description of the grinning and exposure of the canine teeth under furious rage is excellent. I presume that you would not object to my quoting it." Asks about contraction of "grief muscles". Comments on blushing. Offers to send book by G. B. A. Duchenne [Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine(1862)].

"If you feel astonished at my bringing man & brutes so near together in their whole nature (though with a wide hiatus) I feel still more astonished, as I believe, at your judgment on this head. I much wish you had enlarged your concluding sentence a little so as to say whether you consider the ordinary mental faculties so distinct, or whether you confine the enormous difference to spiritual powers including the moral sense.––"